Head Start: Another Costly Government Failure

What’s more realistic: A unicorn, Bigfoot, the Loch Ness Monster, or a successful government program?

This isn’t a trick question. Even though I’ve presented both theoretical and empirical arguments against government spending, that doesn’t mean every government program is a failure.

I suppose the answer depends on the definition of success.

Government roads do enable me to get from Virginia to Washington every day. And the Post Office usually gets mail from one side of the country to another. By that standard, many government programs and activities yield positive results.

But if the question is whether government achieves anything in a cost-efficient manner, you’re probably better off searching under your bed for unicorns.

If you pose this question to someone on the left, however, don’t be surprised if they point to Head Start. The conventional wisdom in Washington is that this program gives low-income kids a critical leg up before they start school.

I would like this to be true. I may not be fond of big and bloated government, but the best interests of these kids are more important than my desire for a talking point against the welfare state.

There are few institutions more sacrosanct in Washington than President Johnson’s Head Start program. The federal government spent more than $7.9 billion on the program in 2012 alone to provide preschool services for nearly 1 million low-income Americans. The program represents everything that is supposedly great about the liberal welfare state. It redistributes resources from wealthy to poor. It uses the power of the federal government to combat inequality by giving poor and minority students an educational boost before they fall behind their wealthier peers. There’s just one problem: It doesn’t work.

Is that an empty assertion? Nope, it’s the evidence from the government’s own research.

The ongoing randomized study of Head Start was based on a nationally representative sample of 5,000 children who applied for the program in 2002. Approximately half of the subjects received Head Start services, while the other half did not. The students were then tested on their language, literacy, math and school performance skills. …the 2010 Head Start Impact Study report notes, “the benefits of access to Head Start at age four are largely absent by 1st grade for the program population as a whole.” Specifically, the language, literacy, math and school performance skills of the Head Start children all failed to improve. …Now, the HHS has finally published a follow-up to its 2010 study that follows the same children through the end of third grade. And again, the HHS has concluded that Head Start is ineffective, concluding that Heat Start resulted in “very few impacts … in any of the four domains of cognitive, social-emotional, health and parenting practices.” And those impacts that were found “did not show a clear pattern of favorable or unfavorable impacts for children.”

So what’s this costing the nation (above and beyond the failure to improve the lives of children)?

Since 1965, the federal government has spent $180 billion on Head Start. …Does that sound like a program you’d want to spend $8 billion on next year?

Now imagine the good things that would have happened if that money was left in the economy’s productive sector.

Or, if you like government, but at least want good results, imagine the good things that would have happened if state and local governments shifted $180 billion from the failed school monopoly into genuine school choice programs.

But let’s close on an optimistic note. As far as I know, there’s no evidence that Head Start actually damages children. It’s just wasted money.

19 Responses

[…] Dan Mitchell in his excellent blog, International Liberty. He writes that Head Start is yet another costly government failure. By the government’s own research “the benefits of access to Head Start at age four are […]

We had a similar thing in the UK, called Sure Start. Lots of pre-school classes, but instead of means-testing they just located them in “deprived neighbourhoods”.

The study after a couple of years concluded that the only effect of the programme had been that middle-class parents now knew their way to the social housing estates where the free classes were located.

At age three my son could use the word abscond correctly in a sentence (I had indeed walked away with his fork after cutting his meat). No amount of federal dollars are going to equal being raised and spoken to by an educated person. I understand there is an overwhelming urge to “do something” for the disadvantaged, but this isn’t it.

The conclusion you are drawing does not make sense based on the findings of the research that you are presenting.

Any achievement levels of Head Start students versus non-Head Start students which are measured a full year AFTER the conclusion of the program are irrelevant.

For an accurate measure of the program’s success, you would need to measure the academic aptitude of a representative sample of Head Start students right before they enter kindergarten and compare that to a representative sample of Head Start eligible students who did not go through the program.

You even quoted the most important element of the research:

“the benefits of access to Head Start at age four…”

There are benefits, and major ones. The fact that they fall off after the program terminates is to be expected–just like effects of medicine disappear after you stop taking the medicine. You can point the finger at the first grade teachers if you want, or the parents, but setting your sights on Head Start is ignoring “the benefits of access to Head Start” which the study clearly acknowledges.

I am just as opposed to government waste as anyone, but please tell me if I am off base some how.

It’s not a straw man, it’s an analogy–a comparison between two different things to illustrate a common similarity. You can point to the irrelevant differences between the two things as a red herring if you like, but the similarity remains. And in my opinion, education is very much like medicine. When you stop using it, it loses its effect. I took statistics in college years ago, but I couldn’t find a standard deviation today because I haven’t been using the concepts. Same goes with the foreign language courses most people take; they use it or lose it.

You ask what the benefits are of Head Start. Here they are directly from the study (which was not linked on this website nor the anonymous Washington Examiner article):

“Looking across the full study period, from the beginning of Head Start through 3rd grade, the evidence is clear that access to Head Start improved children’s preschool outcomes across developmental domains.”

“In terms of children’s well-being, there is also clear evidence that access to Head Start had an impact on children’s language and literacy development while children were in Head Start.”

“In the health domain, early favorable impacts were noted for both age cohorts”

The positive effects of the program were not sustained years after the program because the students stopped receiving the academic support and attention that had once allowed them to perform at levels on par with their more affluent peers (who tend to receive the support they need at home).

The purpose of Head Start is not to “instill obedience” as you suggest. If you read the poorly written analysis in the Washington Examiner or the above blog post more carefully, you will see that even they both cite the purpose as using “the power of the federal government to combat inequality by giving poor and minority students an educational boost before they fall behind their wealthier peers.”

In that purpose, the program is measurably successful across the board.

“Looking across the full study period, from the beginning of Head Start through 3rd grade, the evidence is clear that access to Head Start improved children’s preschool outcomes across developmental domains.”

>>What are developmental domains and are how are they improved?
“In terms of children’s well-being, there is also clear evidence that access to Head Start had an impact on children’s language and literacy development while children were in Head Start.”

>>What is the evidence?
“In the health domain, early favorable impacts were noted for both age cohorts”

>>What are the quantifiable metrics for any of the above statements? The language is that of a person that does not want to measure anything specific.

The positive effects of the program were not sustained years after the program because the students stopped receiving the academic support and attention that had once allowed them to perform at levels on par with their more affluent peers (who tend to receive the support they need at home).

>>They presumably went into the public school system: did they become “unsupported”?

The purpose of Head Start is not to “instill obedience” as you suggest. If you read the poorly written analysis in the Washington Examiner or the above blog post more carefully, you will see that even they both cite the purpose as using “the power of the federal government to combat inequality by giving poor and minority students an educational boost before they fall behind their wealthier peers.”
In that purpose, the program is measurably successful across the board.

My statement stands: You cannot use the power of the federal government to combat inequality in this realm.

To use the vernacular, having bad parents sucks and the federal government cannot, even using expensively credentialed surrogates change that.

It is not measurably successful across the board, but the opposite; an expensive failure.

The urge to “do something” is understandable but you cannot collectively fix that which is an individual failure. The worst part is that it installs a false hope that the child being enrolled in the program has its’ needs “seen to” so there is no call for further parental responsibility.

If the Head Start program really does produce any lasting results, rather than hypothetical transient ones, then why does the government itself censor the findings of its own Department of Health and Human Services scientifically rigorous study which assessed the results.

J. Palmer, you say read the report, but it’s been suppressed on the web! see

Without any lasting educational results, and even some deleterious findings, then common sense says it’s a total waste of time and money. And that’s not even the worst outcome…

J. Palmer, how are you involved? Are you a teacher or some other beneficiary of this constitutionally proscribed program? I’m wondering if you should recuse yourself as already involved and therefore not unbiased?